Over the past few years, demand for seaweed has grown beyond its status as a long-lived local, seasonal harvest. Today it is used for fertilizer, health products, and as an additive to processed food. Rockweed has become vulnerable to larger corporate interests, yet another under-regulated natural resource that is under-managed, over-harvested, and over-exploited.
In a continuation of last week's episode, "Hard Edges," host Peter Neill argues that the hard edge has failed us, evidenced by storms that overwhelm barriers and destroy coastal structures. In this episode he will give examples of some of the slowly emerging examples of soft edge engineering and will ask, "How can we turn the new circumstances brought on by sea level rise to our advantage?"
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Our traditional approach to protection from sea and surge has been the hard edge, with the mission to shield us from the encroachment of water. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will take us through the history of the industrial management of ports, wetlands and watersheds and will share some modern examples of "hard edge" engineering and the challenges for existing structures in the face of projected sea level rise, extreme weather and coastal flooding.
As the power is restored, transportation comes back online, and life and order return to a semblance of normal, another storm fades from memory. Yet superstorm Sandy has left us with some very hard questions and facts. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will pose a series of questions that demand answers and will suggest that if we begin to change our ways now we may yet realize a habitable future living by and with the sea.
The after-effects of Superstorm Sandy endure. What is done next in New York and New Jersey will be instructive for everyone everywhere living within coastal areas threatened by the sea. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will discuss the New York Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance and their exemplary five-point structure of values and strategies which could be used as a model worldwide for areas facing similar challenges.
As we have argued here on World Ocean Radio too often before, we can no longer protect ourselves from the cause and effect of climate change through indifference, contrived ignorance, and lack of action. That response is irresponsible to the victims, the coastal communities, and to the rest of the nation who are being asked to finance the reparation this time and next.
Superstorm Sandy ravaged the east coast of the United States in late October, reigniting a conversation of changing climate and the impacts of what is happening to the ocean: acidity, sea level, temperature, polar ice, and extreme weather.